Don't you think

given that all government policy appears to be about helping an apparently randomly selected group buzz word group -the modern deserving poor -be they single parent, hard working families hoodies, the young, the old... -and that parties self consciously distinguish themselves by each year choosing a certain selection - ti would be far fairer if at the stat of every year we had a national lottery, in which the buzz word groups were parcelled out -one could I guess even have a eurovision-style worthy poor contest each year to decide you was in the hat - well it would make more sense then the current hocus-focus...


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he does not just look like a prick

Now about this on for an endurance test.Blane or some other self serving idiot could hold their breath until David Cameron says something not meally mouthed and ambigous.
the Effort would certainly kill Blane, and with any luck it would show Cameron to be the prick he also sounds like.
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Peronalised inflation

It is of course an old joke. when is inflation not inflation - when it is a rise in house prices. That is not inflation but rather an increase in personal wealth (so good).
That is it is not inflation when very few are actually using the realizing the wealth, when they are merely gloating over it (an no matter if this gloat is enough to bugger up the rest...)


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History spits rather than reapeats

strange isn't it that the last few weeks saw three things. firstly the assumption that there would (given the price of fuel) be another fuel blockade.
Secondly that this very expectation meant the blockade when is duelly came was ineffective and unproductive. History does not repeat.
Except of course it does - as fuel shortages did duly come but not because prices were bankrupting hauliers but because they were making tanker drivers greedy!
History did then repeated but for another different reason.Or perhaps better it repeated only by splitting motives form effect. the same thing was attempted for the same reason (but failed) the same result was actually effected (but for quite the opposite reason).
History repeats but t never the same way - tragedy creates joke, and jokes spark other ways to weave the tragic...

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Farce

Poor old david Daves. he has discovered the had way the odd and highly hypocritical robustness of the british system. One can abolish habbeus corpus or restrict freedom, but woe betide the person who wants to similary abuse the system to show up this abuse. For to attack established practice in this way is to open oneself up to the the full horror of the system ignoring you. One will then be left with all the other nuts (and without even a foul exhibitionist such as Mackenzie to compete against). In that place of limbo that is reserved for those who run against the stream....

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Watched

okay - it is fairly obvious I will not like CCTV given the other blogs here. But the real problem is not that it invades privacy. As a matter of fact it does not,as most are switched off. The real problem is not that it creates a false sense of security (which it does), so much as it plays to a naff and naive access in British politics. i mean the axis that has at one end politicians who are desperate to do something (popular), and the people who are desperate to have some act of popularism (The hang the Czar lobby) enacted (and it harm none). The camera's therefore represent a comprises, something appauling popularist, something that appeals the the lynch mob -mentality is done, and done often and cheaply.
Technology is therefore used to placate the mob or at least allow them something more than they had been allowed. the worry is that is technology allows more and more things this Lynch mod bias will come to constantly distort what we doing with it (think DNA data base) and therefore where we spend money. the Mob agenda then seeps into the kind of technology we fund and therefore how and when are change our societies through that technology.
Now there really is a frightening thought!

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criss-crucified

The story of the losing discs is one of those stories about the fault line fast changing technolgies bring to the world. it is impossible to keep up. it is useless (and impossible) to homogenouify different systems. The result is that every feature of modern life is criss cross with technologies of different ages, and different purposes. it cold be no other way. As long as this is the case (and it will be as long a technology changes rapidily) then one will be faced with a simple choice. Use thetechnology to the maxim of its potential and risk cock up. or else police the entire system, worry about every detail, and restricting access at each and every point. One thereby mimises the chance of one kind of risk by restricting what is allowed across the entire system while also opening oneself up to all the abuses of power this restriction can cause.
Not much of a choice really.

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Oh well!!!

Perhaps that one of the offshoots of excess privatization of the service industries is that it removes the desire to go green. i mean by a quirk of fate many of the greenest of measures (insulation or wind power or solar) are very local very small scale affairs. Large companies do not make a profit there therefore. From which two things follow. The politics of the environment becomes caught up in the class struggles of yester year (people versus big business), and there is little or no impetus to follow throw a green agenda (as the wrong people make money). The entire debate become thereby infused with apathy and inappropriate class hate - which is of course beautifully British and wonderfully useless!

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One of those mysteries I suppose

It has been a lovely game of rumour and inuendo. For the last two to three weeks it seems to me very much the case that the British Media have be aching for a 'fuel protest', with a hunger that needs to be seen to be beleives. they are even now in the process of trying to create a panic out of a strike by 5% of the tanker drivers. the deep question I suppose is why - perhaps they want the story of Brown failure or success? Or perhaps they are running out of copy!

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The Game of Shsss

Cannot say it now you know. Cannot say the A level is really gone down the tube. not when pupils are taking it. D not want to discourage them.
Pity that we have created an impossibly daffy a Level in the first place though. I for one as teacher find that endlessly discouraging
Pity also we will only listen to the debate now, when the exams are being taken. Pity then this is the only time one cannot attack the exams and be hear - even in that hearing is the shut up of not now.
naff that.

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Another Bad sign

It is of course a bad bad sing when people use the cock-ups of the other side to critique the party of government. one side much up with the moronic whoops a daisy and the otherside get whoospy dasied instead.
It makes one hope that somehow the economy goes right and Brown becomes unpopular again - to whoospie daisy the critics. (actually given they will keep their jobs that till do little or no good)

assymetrical

it is beautiful really.- faith or habit.
the media have decided that this is the moment they will go for Labour. This is the moment we are right back in 1978. this is the moment it all goes wrong.
And so we the spin endless stories of Brown Difficulties (real or made up), and gives us endless accounts of the country going to the dogs. What to they do Cameron about on the week the Tory party was plagues once again with corruption allegations? His parting!
(what is of course funny is that a man who is clearly losing his hair wanted to play ball with this. Maybe isis trying to convince us that he is not losing it? Or maybe he shared the media worries that is he is allowed to say anything serious the public will twig what a daffy right ring git he is - safer you see to talk of hair).
A far safer ploy given the plot line is Gordon Brown's demise anyway.
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Truth!

Truth also was an odd construction anything long enough and it feels true. Say it with others and it really feels true. say it will feeling and it feels almost certain. Care about it being true for whatever reason (and their can be a multitude of such reasons) and it really will feel to be the case. Confuse it with another charm and the desire to believe what they say, and the true becomes one of those fixed public certainties: the trouble here hough is an odd one our very obession with true makes it so very easy to manufacture...

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The Mirror cracked

Suppose it is obivous, but it is pathetic that the media-politician are driving forward and defining exactly who it is who are allowed to be our politicians Ee get the politicians then who seem seems to stay human when they travel around the country repeating the same political mantra time out of mind.
We get the patient actor with a bizarre ability to be spontaneously friendly and apparently human in the least humane of situation; we get those who are capable of using their adrenalin to cope with the tedium; we get those who are prepared in the name of some mystical quasi-divine state power, to become the vice pieces of others.
Let us hope such people are actually good at ruling. ( My feeling is that it would be easier and cheaper and just as effective to draw straws though!)


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The Twin faces of racism

I is a mystery really. it used to be an age old rule that political parties could eclipse the power of such parties as the BNP, but adopting rascist policies themselves. Time and time again the policy was 'adopted' and the parties tool on aspects of the extreme right. So what has happened now? i mean we have partied which are more abhorently xenophobic than ever before and a BNP thriving? Heaven forbid that is a 'global' economy the issue is no longer race or even culture but rather fear that others are doing or will do better than we are. For is it is (and it sometimes sounds that way) we are all in for the roughest of rides...)


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New Labour legacy

It is a real legacy (if not a really noble one). New labour have found the 'Poor'. I mean for years and years the Poor were simply to be oppressed and ignored (by conservative and then Labor). Now they are yet another political (as so meaningless) term to be bandied about (rather than to be wooed). Cameron makes cynical political capital claiming to talk for the poor (Clegg does the same). the claim is nonsense (look at Tory policy to see that, well as much as they have them). But that is not the point. the point is that New Labour have defined this category as something which matters, a word not to be lost (well for the next few years at least).
a legacy of sort I suppose!
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Cut it out

Aspiration to tax cut?
a code for let us make political capital talking about hopes we never mean to achieve (and are not really desirable anyway), but which will excite greed in people now, and make them more likely to vote for us.
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Where to Begin

If is he problem with biology that is has no respect for morality. It is the problem of morality that it has no ability to define itself beyond the opinion poll or artificially constructed consensus, that is beyond politics. Politics therefore starts to see into the world of chemicals, cells, and unborn things. only problem is that to define what it is doing their it needs not moral criteria but religious ones. At which point everything become utterly problematic, as we never have been able to define an acceptable axis in which to have a politics of god...
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Brief notes of media debating styles.

1). Splicing: the rules for splicing are simple enough.

a) wait until one political opponents slip up big time. Warning you will need to wait to the critical momement when the media frenzy help to itself has reached fever pitch. Hint as a rule of thumb if the story does not run without your help in the first place, never attempt t splice it. Many a good splice is ruined by jumping onto the bandwagon too early. You Will need large complex stories to achieve splicing bliss.

b)  the look for other sequence of event to claim is like this story. There is a real art to this move. One needs o choose these event carefully. one needs a degree of disgruntlement with these over event, and yet not too much. The disgruntlement will mean that your plublic will want to dislike the policy, and your aim is to allow that distain to be expressed 

c) one then produces speeches attempting to link the to stories. here one must simply assume they are linked, describe in the same way (and not attempt any reasoned argument).Tthe aim is to woo people into expressing their loathing for one though there distain for the other. There need not be a direct link therefore, merely a president.

d) Once the link is make prod the issue once or twice to stoke up the fire a little, and then move on. never linger around the blaze you have caused in case it engulf (or illumines) you. So once light run like hell, onto the next one!

e) enjoy yourself! this siam  game so keep relishing it. To attempt to  play this with a Po face is to court disaster.

2) The Game of Mee Too. Another political classic. A game of two Halfs. One must claim to see a  Mee too in the policy of others while "mee tooing" their policies yourself.

a) the cardinal rules of this game is not to start too dam early. never game a Mee Too, unless your political opponent as all too obviously borrowed one policy from you, the more publically the better.

b) You must therefore listen to what the other lot are saying rather carefully. they must look shifty  when they deny the Mee Too, 

c) however once One Mee Too is established the flood gates are open. the rules change utterly the game is now to claim other Policies are a Mee Too.

 Here two moves are advised. the simplest, for beginner involves a list. Here the aim is simply to sound as if the other  claims are true (they need not be). the Mee Too will if done with proper panache, communicate a reality beyond the boring world of facts!

d) An alternative strategy is to explore your opponents Meet Too is a more detailed manner. Seeking to exploit the differences between you, while allowing the too of your are rather similar.

 On the alternative side, if you a genuinely  practicing the gentle art of Mee too,and what to get away with it, you will need these two additional rules.

e) Remember the best defence strategy in the game is to allow your opponents Mee Too may be true (never admit it, merely imply, without saying the argument has been in common currency for a while), but claim your version of it is better. You gain  the political benefit then and negate the Mee Too, For primacy will not necessarily beat competency.

f) do note however you must be careful before allowing yourself this last move. If the policy was pants in the first place, better to let it be forgotten than to take it yourself. You will be blamed if it fails, and no one will remember the policy was not yours in the first place!

g) Do not be tempted to actually Mee Too o often (or to claim it in others too often), there is a real art in the timing of the Mee.

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Oddball

Since when has Politics involved an unlikely and very unlovely splicing of a game of football and the game of government?
ell for a while now.
But there is something really odd don't you think when the language of politics (with its teams, fight backs pep talks) and the language of football coalesce. The Game of Politics (which the media love so very very very very much- well it makes story seas and cheap) , is caught up with drafting endless new laws, that actually have to be enforced - that actually can (and very often do) bugger up peoples lives.
We ((i mean the country) end up with useless laws whose sole purpose was to rescue a government from it whole, and idiotic leaders, who work as political mascots rather than as leaders.
The point to think again about the system of government? Or to just relax and 'enjoy the show' - a deep problem for the west.
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